The purpose of a tool is to make a technician’s work easier. For Phillip Huffman, manager at AAA Auto in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Cal-Van Heavy Duty U-Joint Puller, No. 199, did just that.
While he got off to a bit of a bumpy start when first using the tool, after referencing the operating instructions Huffman had no problems.
“I almost messed up the first time I used it,” Huffman says. “I did not have full lubrication on it, and the tool was trying to slow down on me. But, as I read the footnote [in the operating instructions] and I found out that it does require the lubrication on there, I actually had no issue whatsoever. The tool was lightning fast.”
If anything, Huffman’s mishap only made him like the tool more because it showed him exactly how durable the u-joint puller was. The lack of initial lubrication did no damage to the tool whatsoever.
Huffman notes that kind of durability is something he really looks for in tools, especially in an automotive shop.
“You can have great products and great tools,” he says, “but they’ve got to be durable to the technician because not all technicians use the tool properly.”
So far Huffman has only had the opportunity to test the u-joint puller on u-joint or driveshaft work, but he believes the tool is capable of working on other jobs such as work with ball-joints or the collar on a power steering unit when pulling the unit off.
The u-joint puller comes as a fully assembled unit, meaning there is no guessing at how to properly put the tool together.
Durability, ease of use, and the size were features Huffman particularly liked about the Cal-Van tool.
“I like the size of it for its capabilities,” he says. “Most pullers or presses are quite [a bit] larger than this. Most of time when you're doing u-joints, you're using a u-joint ball-joint press, which is triple the size [and] twice as heavy.”
Compared to other u-joint pullers Huffman has used he says the Cal-Van U-Joint Puller’s capabilities are “astronomically better.”
Huffman couldn’t think of any ways to improve this tool, though he did think a smaller version of the u-joint puller could come in handy for work on passenger cars. Cal-Van offers smaller u-joint pullers just as Huffman describes. The U-Joint Pullers, Nos. 905 and No. 907, are for intermediate applications as well as work on cars and light trucks.
Overall, Huffman says he is “extremely pleased” with the performance of the Cal-Van Heavy Duty U-Joint Puller.
